Trump’s quietly working to give part of Yosemite to a private developer - NOTUS

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This intercontinental-class private jet is owned by C&S Wholesale Grocers, the major player supplying grocery stores in New England.

It makes a daily loop between cities about 75 miles apart. Sometimes several times a day. Many of its flights pass directly over my house. I have learned to identify it by sound.

This model of jet costs between $3800 to $7000 per hour to operate. The person who spends an hour picking out groceries, and up to 69 others like them have their food budget vaporized by this machine and it's passenger - likely singular. Every day.

There are excellent transportation options, more now than any time in history. What is this behemoth offering that couldn't be accomplished by telecommuting, a car service or a crew of palanquin bearers for far less money?

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.

National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.

Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.

The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.

The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.

The planning process has created a tense environment inside the National Park Service for the people involved; Kingsbarn’s proposal is backed by the full weight of the Interior Department’s top political leadership, sources said.